BlizzCon Schedule
BlizzCon is coming up later this week, and we have whipped up some fancy countdowns for you to stare at while you wait! The schedule is entirely dynamic and will automatically update the panel times according to your timezone! For those of you who want to speculate on the potential next WoW expansion, there are only 2 things that might point to what's going to happen at Blizzcon:

Dragon Soul PTR Testing - Ultraxion, Blackhorn, and Spine of Deathwing
More of the Dragon Soul raid was tested recently and n1kftw was once again kind enough to upload videos of the encounters on Youtube for us.

It also seems that some guilds were able to reach the Madness of Deathwing, even if the testing wasn't available. This is a nice first peek at the last raid encounter of the Cataclysm expansion!

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Number of Changes in Patch 4.3
As we mentioned in the Rate of Change blog not long ago, we feel like we have reached a point where too many changes can do as much damage as not enough changes. It shouldn’t be too surprising to see lots of requests (or demands!) here on the forums for balance changes, whether those are small numbers tweaks or larger ability redesigns. The risk of the echo chamber effect can be strong though. A great majority of players don’t participate in forum discussions at all, and even among those who do, it tends to be those with a grievance who make a post. Indifferent players don’t often post to say they are indifferent, and many players won’t expend the effort to publicly state that they disagree with your idea. (When they do, they also risk igniting some exhausting flame wars.) But you have to remember that even if it seems like “everyone” is rallying for a certain change, you’re not seeing the majority and you have no idea if they would agree with the necessity of the change.

When asked directly, they might not even disagree with the their character getting buffed or a mechanic smoothed out. But over time these seemingly “no brainer” changes can build up into an intimidating list. Class changes, especially in between expansions, and especially when hotfixed in between two patches, can be exhausting for many players. They don’t want to have to figure out if their rotation or gear strategies have changed overnight. They don’t want to have to devour all the latest theorycrafting and wonder if they’re supposed to respec every time they log in. That sort of thing may be fun for a lot of you guys – the active forum community. Heck, it’s fun for the kind of people that end up being game developers. But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for the game. We have to weigh very carefully whether a seemingly innocuous change is worth making, because those changes are not “free” in the sense that they do burn some political capital with players. We have definitely been getting the message lately that the design churn in the last few patches has been too great, so we’re trying to be more cautious.

It's the kind of topic that is worth discussing though. It may be that small changes to passive abilities, like the hunter, warlock and DK tweaks in 4.3, are small enough not to bother people. On the other hand, it could be that some players may be still living under a fear of change and we haven’t scaled back enough.

We didn’t say we weren’t going to make balance changes when we feel they are justified, and we have made many for 4.3 already. We just wanted to point out that too many changes, even with the noblest of goals, can be as unhealthy for the game as failing to make changes that are necessary. We don’t want to hit either extreme. Some players seem to be looking for near constant balance adjustments (weekly or more often), and while the designers would be thrilled to do it, they also believe it would have severe long-term consequences. You may not know the kinds of players who get weary of constant design noodling, because they might not post on the forums, but there are a lot of them out there. Our strategy will continue to be: make most changes in expansions, some changes with patches, and the occasional change via hotfix. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Is Cataclysm the final expansion?
Cataclysm is absolutely not the last expansion. We have plenty of vigor left in us yet. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)No Word of Glory through Beacon?
Word of Glory definitely triggers BoL. That was an oversight in the patch notes posted 90 minutes ago. We apologize for the confusion. We have updated the notes to read:

Beacon of Light is triggered by Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PTR: Holy Paladin Changes
The 4.3 design is that Holy Radiance generates Holy Power if you have the Tower of Radiance talent. This is the only way it has ever worked for 4.3. In a nutshell, we did not want Ret and Prot paladins using Holy Radiance on cooldown just for the Holy Power benefit. It looks like some bad data-mining may have led to the belief that Holy Radiance would always generate Holy Power even without Tower of Radiance, but that was never the intent. The quote “Holy Radiance no longer grants a charge of Holy Power,” [post 1] is likewise incorrect and confusing. Before 4.3 there was no connection between Holy Radiance and Holy Power. After 4.3, the Tower of Radiance talent provides the Holy Power. We will let you know if the design changes again, but do not anticipate that being the case. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Deathwing raid looks amazing and I'm looking forward to the announcement of the next expansion. That said, that blue post is the stupidest thing I've ever read. "Too many changes can be intimidating for the player in between expansions". Really? Are you that freaking stupid? The only beef players had with the changes was the fact that Blizzard REPEATEDLY overdid nerfs or buffs and had to change them MULTIPLES TIMES AFTER THE PATCH WENT LIVE because they refused to listen to feedback on the PTR. They have no excuse whatsoever for such poor service and its stupid that their using that as a measure for "too many changes".

Deathwing raid looks amazing and I'm looking forward to the announcement of the next expansion. That said, that blue post is the stupidest thing I've ever read. "Too many changes can be intimidating for the player in between expansions". Really? Are you that freaking stupid? The only beef players had with the changes was the fact that Blizzard REPEATEDLY overdid nerfs or buffs and had to change them MULTIPLES TIMES AFTER THE PATCH WENT LIVE because they refused to listen to feedback on the PTR. They have no excuse whatsoever for such poor service and its stupid that their using that as a measure for "too many changes".

LOL no no no no. They change a pet model and some part of the community will be up in arms and start some crusade that people seem to follow blindly until they get what they want or something else happens and that becomes the new flavor to bash on. Flavor of the month shouldn't refer to classes anymore but what the whiners are going on about.

---------- Post added 2011-10-19 at 04:41 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Mehduhsin

Hmm reminds me alot of the yogg fight. All i see is killing tendrils, elementals, and oozes. So far nothing that makes me come back to this. Looks great but same old gameplay

I am really disappointed in Dragon Soul. The Deathwing fight looks super lame. So he is super massive, yet you only fight on like a 1/10th of him?Why couldn't we just fight Deathwing, instead of stupid corrupted tentacles and shit. So silly.

I am really disappointed in Dragon Soul. The Deathwing fight looks super lame. So he is super massive, yet you only fight on like a 1/10th of him?Why couldn't we just fight Deathwing, instead of stupid corrupted tentacles and shit. So silly.

Ok game designer tell us in your wisdom how do we fight something that big with out some kind on weak spot (the big grappling tentacles that go left and right into the cliffs)?

No kidding. I was flipping through my image folders and saw tons of pictures of Cataclysm content from the first week of October, two years ago. Pretty much everyone exactly two years ago knew exactly what was coming announcements-wise at Blizzcon.

It seems like they narrowed down their F&F alpha lists to stamp out all the leakers.